Today’s tour of Wisconsin began with a little drive out to Racine to visit the O&H Danish Bakery. They are supposed to have the best kringle. I have to take everyone’s word on that as I had never had a kringle before. It was a small unassuming building, but there where treasures within! It is amazing how with the most basic ingredients, such as flour and sugar, different cultures can make so many varieties of desserts and pastries. There were some overlaps, the elephant ears look somewhat close to frybread and the kringle was basically coffee cake. Much like almost every culture has its own flat bread – pita, tortillas, naan, etc., all start with flour but become something different.

Lovely little meringue shells, waiting to be filled with fruit or custard.

The nice older lady behind the counter gave each of the kids a chocolate chip cookie too. After buying several varieties of kringle and way too many pastries we continued on our little adventure to Apple Holler. It’s an apple orchard and family fun spot. We were way too early for apple season, but when it is apple-picking time they allow you to pick your own apples. Around that time they also serve a great warm apple cider, or so I hear from my nephew. The grounds were pretty empty, but that gave us free reign throughout the park. We ran through the corn maze, my little daughter got to chase a chicken, and we fed some goats. Everyone had fun, even the adult males. We had a late lunch at their restaurant, which had amazingly good food for a roadside tourist stop. They bring fresh cornbread and apple butter to the table! I had a pot roast sandwich with creamy horseradish on the side, my husband had the all you can eat fried chicken and fish. My sandwich was so good that my four year old ate half of it and ignored her mac and cheese. The skin on my husband’s chicken was crispy and the meat was so tender. We left there with a jar of apple butter and some homemade caramels, I’m looking forward to cracking that jar open when we get home.

If there were more people in the park then I could have filled the vacant apple spot.

Yesterday was our first full day in Wisconsin. The kids and husband swam, the kids bounced on the trampoline and we ate grilled food. It was a very good day.

Helllloooo Summer! 5/28

Snorkel

Today we visited a small local water park, Country Springs. It’s part of a hotel and is indoors. The kids had a wonderful time and everyone left exhausted, but with enough energy left to make smores in the backyard before bedtime.

Country Springs 5/29

Mother Goose 5/29

We saw these geese in a grassy area on the way back to the house tonight. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such young geese, by the time they fly south to our area the are pretty well grown.

We all slept extremely well in our hotel room. The beds weren’t like some of the more fluffy, ultra-soft, sleeping in a cloud beds that we may have had in other hotels, but they were comfortable and we were all exhausted. Hilton Express also offers free breakfast and for a bare bones hotel, they are not bad. This hotel had an automatic pancake maker, like something I would see on a Jetson’s cartoon, or a PeeWee Herman film. The kids were in awe and wanted one for the house, until they realized how long it took for one pancake to emerge. Then it started breaking down which caused great merriment amongst the family.

A pancake stingray!

A pancake tie!

We left our hotel to continue our trek to Wisconsin, with a quick side trip to the St. Louis Arch. My daughter is a huge fan of the Percy Jackson series of books written by Rick Riordan. The first book, The Lightning Thief, has the main character off on a series of adventures based off of Greek mythology. Trying to not give away too many spoilers here, one of his first stops is the St. Louis Arch where he meets up with Echidna. Not to be confused with Enchinada who, according to my son, is the god of spiciness and cheese.

Hey, this arch isn’t so big, or My Son the Giant.

It was a long, long drive, but we finally made it to Wisconsin. My husband drove the entire time because on long trips I get car-induced narcolepsy and my head will drop without notice. Thankfully I’m not a big drooler. The kids began the day fighting so as punishment we took away all their movies and games to show them how we had to travel as kids. They pouted, the oldest cried at losing her DS, but the interesting thing was that after a few minutes they were giggling and chatting. We kept the games and movies off for a couple hours and talked and laughed. We did give them back when it was time for the little one’s nap but it was food for thought. This morning they are splashing in the pool while I’m writing the post for yesterday and thoroughly enjoying themselves with their cousins. It is so beautiful and green, perfect except for the fear that a couple of these mosquitoes might carry off the four year old.

Yesterday we started the first leg of our first summer vacation. Traveling by car has become much more pleasant since we got the minivan three years ago. We have movies, books, and a couple toys to keep the kids busy. It still doesn’t decrease the number of times a four year old asks “are we almost there?”

We saw this old car and a bunch more like it outside a Ruby Tuesday in Springfield MO, it was some kind of rally and people were setting up chairs in anticipation for a parade. I bet this car doesn’t have air conditioning.

We spent the night at a Hilton Express, few frills but they have clean rooms and free breakfast, not to mention a pool open until 10 PM.

How fast does a month go racing by? End of the school year has us busy catching up on schoolwork and is filled with the usual school parties and awards. The wonderful thing about the 366 Project is that when I input my pictures, it makes me remember EVERY day from the past month. How often do we get the chance to look back on almost a full thirty days and be able to pull something from each day? It also serves to remind just how quickly those days are gone, I thought in order to catch up to the current date that there would be a lot of drudging through pictures. Instead, I was somewhat disappointed because the pictures ended too soon. I had to go through each date to make sure that I did indeed include every day since the last post.

April 27th. Visiting a friend with an awesome tree house, too bad the trees around our home are so thin in the branches.

April 28th, sitting and spinning.

April 29th – future projects

April 30th, first orthodontic visit, say cheese!

May 1st, gone fishin

May 2nd – Wha?!? An automatic jam maker? With this and a bread machine I could get all the homemade flavor with none of the sweat!

Family in town and taking over the living room on May 3rd.

May 4th, three of my friends on the way to the ballpark.

My son’s First Communion was on May 5th.

May 6th the traveling family left for home. When gassing up the cars, the person from this one threw a lit cigarette out their window.

Mermaid Mingle! 5/7

May 8th I had a mother son date at Chick-fil-A

5/9 Soon to be yummy goodness, I’ll post more on this later when the project is finished.

5/10 Just a pretty flower.

5/11 The first tomato from our little plant.

May 12th, stunt kids.

May 13th, Mother’s Day loot

Caught a giant spider on 5/14, we kept him under the container until my husband got home to take it into the yard.

May 15th the kids were in school so I enjoyed a couple of my chocolates in peace.

5/16 Lights in the top of a giant box, it has become her napping cave.

5/17 We clowned around while getting ice cream

5/18 Second grade field trip, he is so excited.

5/19 Horseshoes in the dark

5/20 We went for a long walk at the Wild Basin Wildlife Preserve.

5/21 Grocery shopping with friends

5/22 Making Four Berry Jam

5/23 Playing Headbandz, what am I?

Fifth grade graduation! 1 of 2 photos for 5/24, because it was such a special day.

5/24 “Smile Daddy”

5/25 I only needed two of the three dogs so this was an interesting adventure. Everybody wanted to go for a ride, too bad it was to the vet office.

As a kid I was obsessed with anything that glowed in the dark. I don’t know why, but I loved the bouncy balls, plastic bugs, nail polish, anything that glowed in the dark. I didn’t have much of it, so maybe that’s why I was so obsessed, or maybe I was just a strange kid. I found a craft project on Pinterest that had jars dotted with glow paints and had to try it. After painting you can’t store food in it anymore, but they look cool.

“Charging” the jars with lights. The first jar I used was a glass pickle jar, then I realized that glass jars probably are not the best plaything for three rowdy kids. The other jars are plastic, a big peanut butter jar and I don’t remember what the other one held. Just dot the inside of the jars with glow in dark paint, I found mine at Hobby Lobby. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

116/366

I told my ten year old “Look what I did, it looks like I captured stars in a jar!” and she said “Yeah, as if you could really do that. Stars are too hot and they’d melt the jars.” Yes, she popped my bubble a bit, but I still think they look super cool.

117/366

On another note, this is the book that never ends. Page 532 and I’m still waiting for something to happen. This is the last book in the series and I feel like I have to finish this one, but it is so much drier than the other books. Only 296 more pages.

Found this on a toy box, that horse looks like he’s eating her arm! And why would you camp right there under your horse? They don’t know how to tiptoe, what if it stepped on you? Horses don’t care where they poop either.

113/366

Sunday we let the kids loose on the boxes the piano was shipped in. I have some plans for the largest box, but I try to intervene in their play as little as possible. Have you seen the video about the boy in his cardboard box arcade? I highly recommend it, Caine’s Arcade. It has inspired many kids to create their own game arcades out of boxes. I haven’t shown the movie to my kids yet, I wanted to see where their play would take them first. So far it’s been a fort, a horse corral, and a house. The larger box was an elevator, a cave, and a place to play with flashlights.

114/366

These girls have been friends since they were little babies. It’s fun seeing their personalities evolve.

115/366

We introduced him to his first Choose Your Own Adventure book. It was the quietest meal with him in attendance ever. He read through the whole thing multiple times in one night then took the book to school with him the next morning.